The last few days have seen a change in the pressures which the sector has been facing, both homecare and care homes. Since the schools have gone back we have seen a considerable degree of pressure being placed on the testing system and this has resulted in the last week with a dramatic increase in the number of staff across the sector having to self-isolate as a result of their children being symptomatic or otherwise. I brought this up with the CHRAG group on Thursday and made the point that it is with some difficulty that we got to the stage at which in the previous week we had 36,000 staff being tested and that we cannot go back. We have put out a clear statement indicating that the continued testing of staff (and that means them being tested and getting their results in less than 72 hours) must remain a priority. I for one do not want us to get to the stage that there is a discrimination against care in favour of a priority from education. We issued a statement to the media on this issue which is contained at the foot of this update.
In addition, within the last 24 hours and with effectively three hours’ notice the UK Portal c hanged the method of distribution and collation of the tests, including a change in the requirement to have a CI number and the issuing of a new identifier. This is yet again an example of poor communication – this time from the UK Government. Caroline has written in the strongest possible terms and will be bringing these issues up at the Testing meeting on Monday morning.
The following is a summary of some of the main issues in the week that has passed.
Care Tech 3.
Yesterday we held our first ever virtual conference event in the form of Care Tech 3. It was a resounding success with over 200 tickets sold which means that it was effectively twice the audience which we had at the physical event the year before. I want to express a huge debt of gratitude to Tara French who co-ordinated and organised the event and programme, and also to Shanice and Stefanie who did so much work behind the scenes (quite literally). There was a real sense of energy and discovery during the day in the panel discussions and in the networking that took place. In particular I am delighted that through the work of Tara and the Technology Advisory Group we were able to publish Scottish Care’s Vision of technology which can be found at https://scottishcare.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/A-vision-for-technology-digital-in-social-care.pdf
I have said before and would want to underline that there is tremendous ingenuity in the social care sector in relation to technology and digital and Scottish Care needs to be centre stage in that process. Thanks to all who spoke, who shared and who took part.
Homecare Festival. WEDNESDAY 7TH – FRIDAY 9TH OCTOBER.
Next week we will be publishing our exciting programme for the 3-day virtual Homecare Festival. The week that has passed has seen us all working on the programmes and finalising speakers etc. The Festival will have a distinct theme on each day.
Wednesday 7th October:
Theme 1: Re-shaping Homecare – issues of vision, sustainability and practice
Thursday 8th October
Theme 2: Maximising potential: the critical role of the homecare workforce
Friday 9th October:
Theme 3: Home is where the rights are: homecare and human rights
There will be the usual mix of main talks, plenary sessions with Q and A and workshops. This will highlight issues faced by care at home and housing support. We will culminate the week with an Awards Evening on the Friday 9th October evening at 7.30 pm which will be hosted by Michelle McManus and myself.
Look out for information next week.
Care Home Issues.
COVID19 deaths in care homes sadly increased to four deaths to the week ending 23rd August. This is a salutary reminder as we begin to enter the winter period that there will be real challenges in the weeks and months ahead and that the dangers of the virus (regardless of stringent IPC measures) are considerable and deadly.
The Digital Daily Huddle tool has started and there is a very high level of sign up. Indeed, on Thursday there were only 71 homes (6.57%) not signed up. There are still, however, many care homes who whilst they have signed up have not started to input data and I would encourage members to do so in the coming week. On Thursday 446 homes had not inputted data which is close to 40% of those signed up. In addition, there was another webinar to answer practical questions on the Huddle Tool held on Thursday and this is available on the website. ( see https://scottishcare.org/digital-safety-huddle-webinar-recording-27-august/) Individuals who are struggling with any issues are reminded that NES are hosting a daily surgery at 9.15 to answer practical questions. In addition if the teams have any issues they can use the help desk [email protected]
We were pleased to be able to welcome to the weekly Surgery contributions from Prof Graham Ellis and Hugh Masters who have been developing Guidance documents on both visiting, use of communal areas and the return of professional staff into care homes. I hope members founds this to be a useful session. I have discussed with both Graham and Hugh the prospect of them returning to do an input on a monthly basis into the Surgery – on any clinical issue for both care homes and homecare as we run through the autumn and winter period. They have both agreed to do this and we will identify dates for this in the coming days.
The week started again with another with the Sunday Post ‘revelation’ of a leaked document stated the Cabinet Secretary was congratulating HSCPs for achieving targets on delayed discharge. These issues again formed the focus of the opposition questions in Parliament. Scottish Care re-iterated our position as per our media statement in which we have tried to try to indicate the reasons why someone might have returned or been accepted into a care home. See https://scottishcare.org/scottish-cares-statement-on-hospital-transfers-to-care-homes/.
In general, the Clinical and Professional Advisory Group met again and heard that the Cabinet Secretary was due to sign off on a range of Guidance – this includes new Guidance on the use of communal space and on supporting the return of professional staff and others. I hope this will come out in the next few days.
We also spent some time talking about the importance of engagement with family members and relatives. I discussed this issue directly with the Cabinet Secretary earlier in the week because I suspect like many care home managers and providers I have been inundated by a growing number of very emotional and at times angry letters from families who feel that they are being denied access to their relatives. This is of course a hugely sensitive subject and we issued a media statement on this matter following a call by NDCAN in the media last weekend to be more closely involved in care home life. See https://scottishcare.org/scottish-cares-statement-on-care-home-visiting/ . CPAG decided to set up a small group to focus on improving engagement and to meet with a range of individuals from various groups. I hardly need to stress the significance of this issue. If care homes gain a reputation (Which is becoming dominant in the media) that people cannot see their relatives then it is likely to have a hugely negative impact to the degree that people will be less likely to send their relatives to care homes – indeed anecdotally we are hearing about this already.
The Care Home Rapid Action group met as usual and this week a smaller sub group met to explore the issue of the role and responsibilities of the diverse actors involved in care home visits together with the agreement to establish a small group to explore the relationships between HIS and CI on inspections – the latter is an issue which I know is affecting many members with a sense of inconsistency between what is being said by Ci inspectors and HIS officers.
Finance and sustainability
COSLA and Scottish Government held discussions on the tapering of sustainability support which had been mentioned in the letter extending support into September. You may remember that this letter stated support would be tapered through August and September.
A letter detailing their new arrangements is now on the website having been issued yesterday afternoon. See: https://scottishcare.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Social-care-sustainability-payments-letter-SG-COSLA-28-Aug.pdf
This letter states that:
- Care Home Occupancy Payments will begin to taper with 75% of voids caused by the continued impact of COVID paid in September, 50% in October and 25% in November. These will continue to be paid at 80% of the National Care Home Rate;
- The planned care approach for care and support and community-based services will remain in place until the end of October to allow a transition period;
- Additional costs for personal protective equipment, infection prevention control and staffing related costs, in line with Scottish Government guidance, will continue to be met in line with current arrangements and are subject to ongoing review and engagement with the sector; and
- Social Care Support Fund payments will continue subject to extension of the regulations.
Scottish Care was consulted during this process and our arguments were that we were very concerned indeed that support would be rmoved in totality. This cliff-edge has at least been avoided and our requests that there should be an ability for providers who were experiencing difficulties to raise these at a local level were indeed heard. Our major points of concern relate to care home occupancy and care at home funding.
One of the challenges is that there are some care homes where occupancy has returned to where it had been previously and some which are in a better position than pre-Covid. However, there are a significant number which are considerably down from pre-Covid figures.
We currently do not have robust data on these issues and the Digital Daily Huddle (albeit on only half of the home inputs) is indicating to Government that occupancy is close to 90% across the country. Given the slow return of social work funded clients coupled with the low number of self-funders and the ongoing concerns over people being able to visit relatives we are very concerned that this situation will not improve and that the funding being offered till the end of the year will not be sufficient.
We need to get further detail from members on these issues, both in terms of care at home payments ending and also care home occupancy. You will note that there are at least some positive statements re payments for Covid support in terms of Covid costs and PPE.
Please refer to the discussion board and put your views forward there.
Testing
Testing has become significantly problematic in the week that has passed as I stated at the start of this update. Despite this at least 36,867 care home staff were tested in the week ending 20th August. At least 1,261 individual residents tested. The former is actually an increase on the previous week.
Communication
Next week the Tuesday Surgery will be at the usual time of 11 am and will be hosted by Karen Hedge and myself.
Workforce
May I remind you that the next meeting of the Regulatory Forum for Care Homes will be held on Monday 7th September 2020 between 10.30am and 12:30pm. This meeting will take place via Microsoft Teams, and invites have been sent this week. Again, if you would like to attend this meeting and have not already done so, please email [email protected]
The Regulatory Forum explores how regulation of our services impacts upon Care providers and the social care workforce. SSSC, who co-chair, advise and guide on new initiatives with providers being able to highlight challenges and solutions on topics such as registration, SVQ, qualifications and training among many others. We are also delighted to welcome Liz McPake from the Care Inspectorate and Andrew Morrall from Disclosure Scotland. More input from frontline colleagues and providers can only increase our effectiveness, so please join Caroline and the group where possible.
Workforce Event – 16th September 2020
A Salute to Care Managers: recognising the importance of your own wellbeing
We are delighted to welcome you to join us for our next workforce event ‘A Salute to Care Managers: recognising the importance of your own wellbeing’ which will be held online on Wednesday 16th September 2020 between 10am and 12pm.
The event will focus on the wellbeing of home care managers and the challenges being faced providing ongoing support for staff and caring for your own personal wellbeing at this time. We aim to give those participating the opportunity to discuss their own experiences dealing with COVID and to gain feedback from care managers in the social care workforce as to their specific needs in this area.
- Session 1 – NES Psychological 1st aid module – how this can benefit managers with their own wellbeing and supporting their staff.
- Session 2 – Care provider wellbeing initiative – introduced during COVID, how this has been implemented and the impact on staff wellbeing.
- Session 3 – SSSC manager wellbeing and support – this will be an interactive session for managers to feedback what wellbeing resources / initiatives have been most helpful and effective and where this work can continue to focus to best effect.
Further information including the programme will be sent out with invitations to the event over the next week, if you wish to attend please email [email protected]
This event will take place in two parts.
10am – 12pm Home Care and Housing Support organisations and managers
2 – 4pm Care Home organisations and managers
Care Home Festival
Just a reminder for your diaries.
We will be going online with the Care Home Conference and Awards and will be holding a Care Home Festival over three days from Wednesday 25th November till Friday 27th November with an Awards Ceremony in the evening of the 27th. We will be starting the Awards application process at the start of September.
Nursing
Please look at the latest blog from Jacqui Neil our Nursing Lead -m To vaccinate is to care – which explores the critical importance of vaccination of staff in the coming weeks and months. See https://scottishcare.org/august-nursing-blog-to-vaccinate-is-to-care-our-new-moto/
Politics
Members will be aware that the Cabinet Secretary, Ms Freeman announced her retirement at the next Parliamentary elections. Obviously a transition at what might be a very critical stage for the sector will bring some uncertainty as new people come into post with different views etc – indeed this will be after the Elections. It has also become known to me that there is a strong likelihood that the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government which is due in the next weeks will propose the establishment of an Independent Inquiry into Social Care – with the aim of developing proposals for the future of social care. This clearly relates to the growing ‘sympathy’ for the idea of a National Care Service which is gaining ground albeit with no substantive evidence as to what people are meaning by that , other than the Labour party’s comments through a Richard Leonard speech which included developing 25,000 new quality jobs. Alas no mention of how all this will be paid for.
And finally,…
In keeping the issues of care and the sector at the forefront of the concern of many please join me in lighting a #candleforcare on Tuesday at 7.00pm
Many thanks
Donald
29th August 2020
Statement re Testing:
Scottish Care is fully behind the critical importance of ensuring that the testing system which we have established works as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Scottish Care is aware that there has been increased concern at a local level about the time being taken to get results back to staff who have taken part in the UK Social Care Testing Portal. We are also aware of the lack of direct engagement between the UK Government colleagues who operate the Panel and the Scottish care home sector. Together with all partners the care sector has worked with real energy to get the testing regime working and we are determined to make sure that this is maintained.
When we became aware of these concerns we immediately raised them with colleagues at Scottish Government who have supportively been working with us to address our concerns. As we move into the winter there will be increased pressure on the whole testing system and as the body representing the majority of care providers for older people we are determined to work collaboratively to identify problems quickly and to resolve them speedily.
Dr Donald Macaskill , CEO stated:
“The difficulties experienced in parts of Scotland this week shows to anyone who might have doubted it that we are still in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic and that the care sector is still facing immense pressures. I am pleased that we now have systems in place which enable us once we have identified local challenges to raise these as urgently and directly as possible and to sort the problems out quickly.”
Ends./
